


Before We Go Too Far

by TwilightKnight17



Series: re:Fic [1]
Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Angst, Guns, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, fateswap!AU, it's 3am and what am I doing, slight suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-31
Updated: 2018-01-31
Packaged: 2019-03-11 20:22:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13531839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwilightKnight17/pseuds/TwilightKnight17
Summary: Tomorrow is the end of everything. Is there any reason left to worry about consequences?





	Before We Go Too Far

**Author's Note:**

> (Title is from the song “Insanity” by Gregory Porter. Not a fan of the song itself, really, but I stumbled on the lyrics and they punched me in the face, so.)
> 
> It’s 3am and I wrote half of this in one go. There’s probably too much character study in this, but I don’t really care at this point. ^_^;;
> 
> Written with much love for [JJ](https://askphantomgoro.tumblr.com/) and [Ren](https://askdetectivekurusu.tumblr.com/), who've done terrible things like break my heart, ruin my breakfast, keep me up until 5am, and adopt me into the mafia. ~~jk, I love all of that and wouldn't change a thing.~~ Thanks for letting me take some creative liberties with your toys, Detective-san, Mr. Boss Dad. ;)

Evenings in Yongen-Jaya were quiet. Peaceful. It was one thing that didn’t change, a spark of consistency in a city and a life that was nothing but chaos. Goro was grateful. In all the hell that he’d been through, Leblanc was still a refuge. Nothing bad ever happened within the cafe.

...nothing bad that he hadn’t done to himself, anyway.

The coffee siphons hummed away on the counters, brewing a fresh batch, and Goro stared into the pantry with a dull expression. There wasn’t a lot they could use for supplies, and he didn’t have time to make a pot of curry. The bags under his eyes meant he would have to at least try to sleep at some point. Morgana was already upstairs, probably sleeping in his usual spot on the corner of Goro’s futon. Goro was tempted to just drag himself upstairs and join him, supplies be damned. It was already over anyway. To be melodramatic about it, the roulette wheel had already been spun. He just had to wait and see what the losing number was. Which of them would go down first, this time? Red or black, knife or gun, Akira or him, it didn’t matter.

But he’d promised he would see this through, so he frowned into the pantry once more. 

They had curry ingredients, sandwich ingredients, pancake mix… Rice, spices, peanut butter...

Finally he settled on snatching the box of protein bars from the top shelf and dumping all of them into his bag. They didn’t restore much stamina, but this wasn’t going to last long enough for it to matter, or for Sojiro to miss them.

He didn’t realize he’d forgotten to lock the door after he’d flipped the sign until the bell chimed, and he sighed, setting his bag down and stepping back into the main room. “Sorry, we’re clos--” But he stopped talking abruptly, because Akira Kurusu was standing in the middle of Leblanc, that infuriating smile on his face.

“Hello, dear.”

“We’re _closed_ ,” Goro said sharply. “I have nothing else to say to you.”

“Perhaps I just wanted some coffee. You’re already making some, after all,” Akira said, tilting his head in a way that Goro usually found endearing. But right now, it just felt like another knife stabbing into him. Akira was going to kill him with familiarity as surely as he could with a gun.

He shook his head. “That’s for the _Palace_ , Akira. I thought you wouldn’t make another appearance until the endgame, anyway.”

Akira’s grin was just a little bit manic. “Does it matter anymore? We both know how this ends. I did say we should have fun until the time comes.”

“At this point, I don’t even wonder about your definition of ‘fun’.” Goro rounded the counter and flipped the lock, never taking his eyes off of Akira. He felt oddly calm about the whole thing. He had no idea what Akira was doing here or what he could be planning. There were no social links or familiar events to fall back on. This time, things really had gone off the rails. But it didn’t matter. Even if Akira was here to kill him, he wouldn’t fight it.

“In a game as unfair as this, I do what I can to make it entertaining,” Akira said. “But the most unfair thing of all is that no matter how badly you hurt me, I still can’t help being in love with you.”

Goro muffled a laugh. He couldn’t help it. Akira was right. The most unfair thing of all was being desperately in love with someone that was destroying you. He’d lost count of how many things he’d tried, how often he’d watched Akira die. He remembered things in flashes of memory, bloody fingerprints left in his mind. There was so much to fall back on that even something as simple as talking to Akira in Leblanc hurt, because he could remember better times. He could remember Akira smiling as they chatted over coffee. He could remember Sojiro scolding them for making a mess in the kitchen. He could remember Akira upstairs, in his bed…

“Is that funny to you?” Akira said, something sharp in his voice, and Goro realized he’d never replied.

“You’re right,” he said, still grinning behind his hand. “This is an unfair game.”

But it was a game that was on its last legs. They were already on the road to ruin, which really meant that there weren’t any consequences anymore. All that was left was to wait for the end, wait to wake up and have to do all of this again. So what was wrong with taking advantage of the time that was left?

Goro walked back around the counter to the other end of the room and cut the lights off, aware of how many windows were on the front of the store. Akira was watching him, bemused, and he stepped forward until he was right in front of the detective, his head feeling fuzzy and far away. No consequences. What things he could do…

“You said we should have fun until our death, right?” Goro said. He leaned close, his hands settling on Akira’s hips, sliding under his blazer. “If I’m going to die, I can indulge a little.”

Thief’s fingers found where he knew Akira kept his handcuffs, hooked to his belt beneath the jacket. He ran his other hand up Akira’s chest, and then in one motion he snatched the cuffs and shoved Akira back into one of the booths, relishing the surprise on his face. He followed him into the booth, pinning him with a knee on the bench between his legs and catching his wrists before he could react. The cuffs closed with a click, securing Akira’s hands behind his back and echoing across Goro’s memory.

The last time they’d done anything like this, he’d been cuffed to Akira’s headboard.

“You also said not having risk makes for a _boring_ game. Don’t you like to live _dangerously_ , detective?” he purred, unbuttoning Akira’s blazer.

“I’m not sure if handcuffs count as dangerous for people like us,” Akira said, momentary surprise gone and smirk firmly back in place.

“I wasn’t talking about the handcuffs.”

He knew Akira backwards and forwards. And that included the gun he carried in the inside pocket of his jacket. And oh, was it something to watch Akira’s eyes go wide when he pulled it out and pointed it at him.

“This dangerous enough for you, _honey?_ ” Goro said, leaning close, pressing the gun against his forehead. Just there, that was where Akira was planning to shoot him after the Casino. The reversal was kind of a thrill.

Akira shivered, took a breath, tried to manage a cocky expression and failed. “What are you going to do, then?” he asked. “Shoot me? Blow my brains all over Leblanc’s walls? That’ll be fun to explain to Boss in the morning. You really are crumbling.”

“You and I both know that you have some kind of idea of how this will go,” Goro said, grinning crookedly. “I won’t have to explain _anything_ to Sojiro, but it would be a shame if you never got to reach whatever ending you’ve planned. So for now, you’ll do as I tell you, if you want the chance to finish things your way. So... _open your mouth_.”

He could see Akira weighing his options, and then the detective hummed. “You keep surprising me, _my dear_ ,” he said, and then he obeyed. 

Goro shoved the barrel of the gun between his lips. “This is loaded, isn’t it? I know you; it’s definitely not just for show.” He kept his fingers off the trigger, half from hours of trigger discipline drilled into him by Iwai, and half because he didn’t trust himself. 

Akira just raised his eyebrows and pointedly curled his tongue around the barrel tauntingly. Goro swallowed hard. He reached for the rest of Akira’s buttons with his free hand, attacking his shirt as best he could. It had been too long. The equivalent of years, probably, since he’d last seen Akira undressed. He’d been more and more reluctant to indulge, no matter how badly he wanted to, because he knew what it led to. But that was why it was okay now. Things were already going to hell. He couldn’t possibly make it worse. 

He shoved the blazer and shirt down Akira’s arms as far as he could until they caught on the handcuffs, and ran his hand down Akira’s chest. Familiar scars spread across his skin beneath Goro’s fingertips, though Goro lingered on the places where scars should have existed, but didn’t. A clear patch of skin on his shoulder, free of the stab wound that had pinned him to a wall. Empty places that should have been constellations of bullet holes, from many fights in the cognitive ship. And Goro pressed a palm to his stomach, trying to choke back the memory of the gory exit wound, from the one time they had encountered Shido in the real world, and Akira had stepped between him and Goro against every order to get out of the way. 

Shaking his head, he reached lower, pressing his palm to the tent in Akira’s slacks. “Do you really get off on this?” he asked, and if his voice cracked, neither of them acknowledged it. 

Akira twitched, and glanced down at the gun. Goro pulled it out of his mouth, and Akira took a deep breath. “Only because it’s you,” he quipped, and leaned up to press his lips to Goro’s, biting at his lower lip. 

Goro kissed him back just long enough to taste metal and gunpowder on his lips, then shoved him away and took a few steps back. “No,” he snapped, pointing the gun at him again. “No, _you_ don’t do anything unless I tell you. For once in this goddamn _farce_ of a life I’m living, _I’m_ in charge.” He gestured to the floor in front of him. “Since you seemed fine with the gun, let’s see what else you can do with your tongue.” 

“This is certainly a new side of you, _Leader_. You’re not usually a tyrant.” Akira slid from the booth and to his knees as gracefully as he could with his hands still bound, watching with blood-colored eyes as Goro pushed his pants down enough to free his hardening cock. “Perhaps we should be more worried about _you_ getting off on this.” But he didn’t give Goro a chance to reply before leaning forward and taking him in his mouth, twisting his tongue against the sensitive skin like he had done to the gun. 

Goro shuddered, his free hand grabbing at Akira’s hair. It really had been too long. He’d forgotten how good it felt, to have Akira’s mouth on him, to lose himself and stop thinking, just for a little while. Rocking his hips shallowly, he looked down and met Akira’s eyes, but found that he couldn’t hold his gaze. It was too much to have Akira looking up at him like that. This Akira barely counted as real now. He’d vanish into memories like all of Goro’s other failures, one more ghost to haunt him. 

Akira hollowed his cheeks and sucked, and Goro whimpered, bracing himself against the counter. It was tempting to let Akira continue until he was spent and then leave the detective wanting, but there was something else Goro wanted, and he pulled Akira off of him and dragged him to his feet, tapping the gun against his temple. “Don’t move.” 

Akira licked his lips, but otherwise obeyed, and Goro shoved his pants down and off, indicating that he should step out of them. Once Akira was bare other than the clothes bunched around the handcuffs, Goro pushed him back into the booth to lie on the bench seat and backed towards the kitchen, his aim steady. It was a matter of moments to grab a bottle of cooking oil, which wasn’t the best idea, but who cared? Why bother caring at this point? It was like the protein bars; things weren’t going to last long enough for anyone to even notice it was missing. And it wasn’t proper lube, but Goro didn’t really care in the face of the knowledge that by this time tomorrow they would probably both be dead. 

Wincing at the two slick fingers that slid into him, Akira’s brow furrowed. “You’re crying,” he observed, an odd mix of amusement and concern in his voice. “I don’t think the dom is the one that’s meant to be in tears.” 

“Shut _up_ ,” Goro hissed, continuing to stretch him out, futilely trying to wipe his face on his sleeve. “Just shut up. I can’t listen to you right now, not the way you are now.” 

“What, debauched?” Akira’s voice pitched up in a bitten-off moan, and Goro laughed, an edge of hysteria to it. 

“Like this. The version of you that hates me. The one that I broke by accident. I thought someone else could hold the pieces together, but apparently it’s just us. It’s supposed to be us, and I can’t figure out how to do that without fucking it up!” 

To his surprise, Akira was quiet at that, except for the occasional involuntary whimper. It was only after Goro pulled his fingers out that he said quietly, “I tried.” 

“Tried?” Goro asked. “Tried what?” 

“To love someone else. And Yusuke is...great. But he’s not you.” 

Goro thought of all of his social links. His friends, his confidantes, all of the effort and strategy he’d put in to figure out how to max them all. But the only one that never felt like a chore, the only one that felt like a dance he knew instinctively, was Akira’s. Even if that dance inevitably ended in pain. “No one else...has come close to you either.” 

They ended up with Goro actually on the booth seat, Akira kneeling over him. When Akira sank down onto him, he groaned, jarred by the memory of the first time they had done this. Things had been better, then. More optimistic. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t still good, and he wrapped his arms around Akira’s shoulders to help him keep his balance as they rocked together. 

The gun was still clutched in his hand, and he shifted it, causing Akira to gasp as the muzzle pressed against the base of his skull. Goro grinned, leaning their foreheads together and catching his mouth in a biting kiss. He could feel the trigger guard under his thumb, and a wild part of him wanted to do it. All he had to do was move his thumb, catch the trigger and press. It would spare them both the pain of having to finish the Casino. They could go down together, like Akira seemed to want. Morgana wasn’t here to stop him. 

But he’d promised, and he let the gun dip, just clutching at Akira’s shoulders instead as the detective slammed his hips down even harder. 

It wasn’t long after that until Akira shuddered, tightening around him as he came with a cry. Goro bit down on his shoulder to muffle a shout of his own as he tipped over the edge after him, but he knew it was still too loud. For a moment they just sat there, catching their breath, and then Goro pushed Akira away and went to dig the handcuff key from Akira’s pants pocket. 

They dressed in silence, the atmosphere awkward and oppressive, and then Akira came over and laid his hand over Goro’s where he was still clutching the gun. “I’ll need this back,” he said quietly. “For the Palace.” 

“The Palace… Right…” Goro mumbled. He gave up the gun without a fight, feeling cold. He supposed he should start mentally preparing for whatever end was waiting. “Akira…” 

Akira stared at him for a long time, then smirked, tucking the gun back into his jacket and stepping forward. He pressed his lips to Goro’s cheek, his mouth, his ear, and against the curve of his ear he whispered, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Goro-kun.” And then he was gone, disappearing into Yongen’s night like he’d never been there in the first place. 

Goro stood there for a long time, then relocked the door and staggered upstairs. He took just enough time to throw off his blazer and shoes and then collapsed into bed. 

Morgana blinked at him in the darkness, and he waited for the reprimand, but none came. Morgana just shifted to be closer, and Goro wrapped an arm around him. 

“I was selfish again,” he whispered. “I know it won’t make a difference now, but…” 

Morgana hushed him, tapping a paw against his nose. “You shouldn’t worry so much. Please, just get some sleep. Tomorrow’s judgment day.” 

“I know, I know…” He pulled the blankets up, curling around Morgana and trying not to think. 

Everything would be over soon enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> ...an endless possibility of loops and I do this. Why. Why not a happier version. Guys, what have you done to me? XD
> 
> [This song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUQ4-fLe-qQ) suits them very well, I think. First verse for Akira, second for Goro. It's what I was listening to while writing, anyway.
> 
> I didn’t think I’d write anything more fucked-up than Mousetrap (which ironically enough also involved sex and guns), but there’s one bit up there where I specifically stopped writing and thought to myself “fuck, this one bit is worse than literally everything in Mousetrap if you really look at it.”
> 
> So that’s that. ^_^;;; I hope my characterization wasn’t too far off, guys. I might go back and edit this later when it's not 3am.


End file.
